Speed

Cyclist speed past in a track event at the Burnaby Velodrome. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 at 20mm f/4 1/30 ISO 1600

Here I am, standing in the straight away as it exits the corner.  I am standing on a rickety ladder so that I can see over the top of the steeply sloped track and the sense of speed as the riders approach doesn’t really build until they are almost on top of me.  In that last moment before the first one passes by I am aware, almost too late, that these guys are moving really, really fast and then he is past and the wash of air rushes past me.  The main pack surges and goes by as well and I feel as though I am standing in a temporary wind storm.

I was in Burnaby at the Velodrome to watch some track cycling and getting a sense of the speed that is involved with a still image was difficult.  I was able to get up on a ladder that I think someone had put there for official photographers but no one was using it so I clambered up.  I wanted to use a slow enough shutter speed to get the motion blur of the rider as he went by and that worked out pretty well, the only trouble was that the riders in the background are blurred as well.  I am still trying to figure out a way to get this shot without blurring the background riders.  If you are interested in more cycling photos I have other entries here and here

-Russell Berg

Through a Glass Darkly

A gorilla stares intently in the Seattle Zoo. Canon EOS XSi EF-S 75-300mm f/4-5.6 at 250mm f/5.6 1/45 ISO 800

His eyes stare out intently, not at me, not at someone else but out into the middle distance.  Out to the place in his hindbrain where the pack lived in lush tree covered hillsides.  Out to the place where his father was king and his family moved in freedom.  It is a dimly remembered reflection seen through a glass darkly but it is there, deep down in his DNA every cell in his body reminding him of what he could be.

Visiting a zoo is interesting and exciting but always a little sad.  The people who run the Seattle Zoo do a very good job at producing interesting and stimulating enclosures for the animals but still…  I wanted a photo that captured this tension and when I saw this gorilla I hoped I might catch it.  The zoo has thick glass windows that look into the gorilla’s den and this always produces issues of reflection and dirt on the glass.  The other concern was that it was quite dark in the area where I was shooting but there was just enough light for my lens to capture even thought the maximum aperture was only f/5.6.  After I got the image home I cloned out the reflections and dirt on the glass in Aperture.  Luckily these where mainly in the side of the photo that I wanted to go dark.  I  then exported into Nik Silver Efex Pro and darkened the left side of the photo.  I was really happy with the way that the texture of the skin came through and the way that the his face is in the borderland between dark and light.  It adds to the tension in the image of a wild thing not living in a place where he belongs. 

-Russell Berg

A Negotiated Peace

A wonderful battered old Gary Oak on the shores of Vancouver Island. Canon EOS XSi EF 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 1/4000 ISO 200

The wind blows here.  It winds and twists over the rocks and finds its way through the trees to the place where you are sitting.  The wind does find you but not until after the trees have negotiated a kind of peace for you.  They have protected you and they are true.  You look out from your protected space at the centre of the grove and the sweep of the ocean, the grand rise of the mountains on the mainland, and these trees they all seem to conspire to give you peace.  They all seem to slow your mind and calm your spirit and you take a deep breath. 

There is a wonderful grove of twisted, gnarled old Gary Oak trees at Piper's Lagoon in Nanaimo that is really beautiful.  The trees have grown up on the shore line and have twisted and turned themselves in an apparent attempt to get out of the wind.  They stand on top of a hill that overlooks the Georgia Strait.  I wanted to capture the texture of the bark of these trees so I opened up my lens as far as it would go to get that shallow depth of field and isolate the tree against the background.  I got the shot I wanted but I still wanted to emphasize the texture of the bark some more so I added a bleach bypass filter in Nik Colour Efex Pro. 

-Russell Berg

A Cruel Beauty

A broken piece of ice juts up into the sunset on a frozen prairie lake. Canon EOS 7D EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 at 20mm f/11 1/1000 ISO 400The cold hits your face like a physical force.  You gasp and breathe in and the temperature of the air assaults your lungs.  You take a couple of quick halting breaths and you begin to find your equilibrium.  You are of course dressed for it but the cold is a force in nature that is relentless and inexorable.  It finds the gaps in your clothing and begins to steal the heat away from you.  You breathe deep now and find that your growing accustomed to the discomfort of the air in your lungs and you exhale in a cloud of water vapour in front of your face.  Some of it begins to cling to your eyelashes and soon there will be small ice crystals hanging from each one.  Sometimes, it is difficult to open your eyes all the way.  You begin to walk and the polyester fabric of your jacket crinkles and rustles as you force it to move from it's cold stiffened position.  You glance at the thermometer as you walk past the corner of the house. -37 degrees celsius.

It wasn't that cold when I took this picture, (maybe -15 or -20), but a I wanted a photograph that expressed some of the cruel beauty of our winters in Canada.  The ice on this lake had shifted and cracked on to itself and pushed upwards into the air.  It formed a wonderful counterpoint to the sunset as it fell across the lake.  You have to be careful when backlighting a subject that it doesn't go really dark but luckily, in this case, the ice was translucent enough to let enough light through to preserve the detail in it's form.  There were quite a few specks of dirt in the ice so I cloned them out in Aperture.

-Russell Berg

Bicycle Peace

An old bicylce I found tucked in a corner in the Hindu temple complex at Tanah Lot in Bali. DiMAGE Z10 9mm at f/3.2 1/60 ISO 80

The old man tottered out of the house and found his bicycle leaning against the wall.  He mounted the ancient conveyance and slowly pushed off into the traffic.  His knees creaked as his feet found their way around the pedals for the first few times but slowly he picked up speed and soon he began to feel a cool breeze on his face that pushed away the heavy air he had been breathin.  He knew that one day he would have to stop, that one day his body would no longer let him continue.  But this was not that day.

My family and I were wandering around the temple complex at Tanah Lot and the crowd of tourists was and couvenir sellers was pretty formidable.  There was a man with a really large python charging for photos with it and it was all quite antithetical to the idea of a quiet place of worship.  I poked my head around a corner and found this wonderful bicycle propped into the corner and it was beautiful and quiet.  It was all by itself and no one was paying it the least bit of attention.  I loved it.  I loved the texture of the metal frame and torn worn seat.  I loved the piece of bamboo tied to the rack.  I loved the large car mirror urused* on to the handle bars. I loved the partially inflated tire and the battered pedals.  I loved this bike for all that it was and for all that it was not in this noisy busy place.

-Russell Berg

*urus: to cobble something together, to come up with a non-traditional solution, to find a way to fix something.  It is one of my favourite Indonesian words